


Our Own Kind of Morality

by Wrappedbubble



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Comfort, F/M, Friendship, Hot Weather, Mild Angst, Never tagged before sorry!, Possible second chapter to come, Thoughtful arthur, Too Hot, more than friends?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-08
Updated: 2019-02-08
Packaged: 2019-10-24 17:04:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17708246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wrappedbubble/pseuds/Wrappedbubble
Summary: Arthur Morgan and Emmy Dean have been running with Dutch for years.  But when each plan just leads to more trouble, can they find a way to push past their friendship and find the way of living that they both need.





	Our Own Kind of Morality

**Author's Note:**

> I've never written fanfiction before. I have no real clue what I'm doing. But Arthur Morgan has somehow grabbed hold of my imagination and won't let go. So when the line "we got our own kind of morality" popped into my head, spoken by a woman to him I knew I had to go somewhere with it. It's short, it's imperfect and I have no idea what to think of it. Please do let me know. X

It's too hot to sleep. Too hot to close down the tent flaps. Too hot to eat. Long wakeful nights roll along into long lazy days spent idly swatting at flies and broken by the occasional trip to the little jetty at the camp lake to fish. Because if it's too hot for anything else then it's definitely too hot for hunting. 

Inaction was unusual here. There was always someone cooking up some sort of plan. A theft, a train robbery, a small fight that would go towards winning the war that Dutch had all mapped out for them. Always had an idea; a plan. But this heavy set heat was stuck on them at the camp, draped heavy as a horse blanket.

Tempers were fraying and patience was in short supply. Arguments over next to nothing kept breaking out putting everyone in even more of a bad mood than they were already in. So by order of Dutch everyone had been sent to their tents this evening early; like wayward children, being told rather ironically to "go cool off some before someone gets killed".

Only Arthur had snuck back out under cover of late twilight to sit near what was left of the fire that no one had really wanted lit. But better that than raw fish for supper. Emmy rolled over on her cot trying to find a cool patch to lie on and caught sight of him where he sat on the floor; knees up to prop his journal and his pencil out. Writing or sketching she couldn't tell. She watched him, his back bared and muscular, small movements as he worked at whatever secrets he was putting down on paper. Pushing herself up she padded softly across the dry and dusty dirt to sit down next to him. 

"Turns out I can not draw flames." he said. She looked over at the drawing he'd been sketching and laughed at him. A well meaning and good natured laugh that underpinned their entire relationship. They understood one another, talk came easily to them and so did silence. A quiet kind of safe flirtation that eased the tensions of gang living, born of years of one another's company. 

"No you can not." she agreed. 

He moved to scribble out the image and she stilled his hand with hers.

"Keep it," she said. "Watch a few more fires closely, keep working at it and it'll come right in the end."

"Maybe it will." He said. "Don't you think it's funny how the very thing I need to give me light to see what I need to in this weather is the same thing that's putting out so much heat?"

"Hold up there old man, that is a lot of thinking you're doing there."

"Got to have a think now and then," he said. "Make sure that my brain don't fully seize up on me."

"Well you just be careful." She said, nudging at him with a shoulder and a smile. 

"And less of the old man talk if you please. I ain't got that many years on you," he said. "But if that's your way of thinking how about I show you some good old fashioned old man manners. Miss Emmy..." He stood and extended a hand down for her with a small bow. 

"Why Mr Morgan," she deliberately simpered, all exaggerated accent and fluttering eyelashes. "You sure do know how to address a lady." She took his hand and let herself be pulled up, stopping short and biting off the sound of her loud laugh at the sight of him. 

"Arthur are you wearing a sheet?"

He looked down at himself where he'd knotted it around his hips and left it to trail around his legs, and shrugged, looked back up grinning like a child.

"Coolest thing I got in this heat." he said. "And I don't think you have a leg to stand on, walking around in your night dress."

"I concede the point." she said, taking his arm. "So where are you taking this lady then? All dressed up in a night dress and nowhere to go."

"Oh I got somewhere for us to go." He said.

She placed her hand in the crook of his elbow and allowed herself to be led by him down to the jetty, the water lit bright by moonlight.

"Your seat Miss." He said, indicating the end of the jetty. She smiled at him.

"Perfect," she said, sitting down and hitching up her night dress to her thighs, feet dangling down into the water finally feeling cool. Arthur sat down beside her, dipping his feet in too. The silence stretched out between them, almost the same as it had done so many times before, only this time Emmy became aware that it was being punctuated by small sighs from Arthur. Every few breaths seemed to be another little sigh, a huff of air just on the forceful side that it had caught her attention and now she was waiting for the next. And the next. 

"What"s on your mind?" she asked him.

He found her fingers with his and wrapped them around hers, fitting her hand within his own. A gesture rare enough between them that it caused her heart to blip a little at the contact.

"I been hearing a lot about faith just lately," He said.   
"Seems I keep getting told "have faith, try faith" but faith ain"t getting us anywhere. All we keep doing is going from one mess to another."

He paused and waved his feet in the water while she waited. Emmy knew him; he'd continue once he'd chewed on his words for a while. She knew people thought he wasn't good with words but she knew better. He was very good with his words because he took the time to choose them. 

"I'm not a man of means," he said eventually. "But I've got methods. Sometimes I think I'm more earth than I am human. So these new cities mean nothing to me, but that's the way it's going and I'm here trying to stay with the ground instead of being caught up in it all. The folk in that places, they can"t sort out their troubles without running for the law and then it all gets complicated. We may not have their new city morals but we get things sorted out fair and square. Don't need no law to do it for us."

"You thinking of a different way?" She asked.

"Guess I am," he said. "Somewhere real out of the way.   
Somewhere with peace and time."

"And no neighbours?" She asked, gently ribbing him. 

"No neighbours." He said with a low laugh.

Arthur and Emmy looked up as a fork of lightning slashed its way to the ground, seeing the light so very far away, so far away that the sound didn't reach them. 

Emmy stood, shaking each foot as she lifted it out of the water, and letting her hand drop from Arthur's grip to trail up his bare arm and rest on his shoulder. 

"Think i'm going to turn in before that storm gets here.   
R eckon this heat's about to break and we need a good storm to clear the air." She said. She waited, hand on his shoulder still, only breaking contact when it seemed that he really had not heard her. She began to walk away from him back along the jetty before thinking better of it. 

Arthur became aware of her again only when she dropped to her knees behind him and wrapped her arms and his chest, her cheek pressed to his shoulder blade.

"Arthur Morgan," she muttered onto his skin. "The way i figure it, you and me, we got our own kind of morality and that's got to be worth something." She leaned forward and up, pressing her lips to his skin, just behind his ear, just on his neck. He twisted his best to turn to her. It could not have been called a kiss; their lips barely touched the way they were sitting. It was a press of two people needing to be so close to one another that they didn't even know how to achieve it. 

And when the sound of thunder finally rolled close enough in to be heard he found that this time, when she got up to walk back towards camp, he was walking with her.


End file.
